ALPAGA workshop - Genome evolution in asexual organisms

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The scientific committee

• Karine Van Doninck, UNamur, Belgium: organizer
• Bernard Hallet, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
• Jean-François Flot, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Etienne Danchin, INRA Sophia Antipolis, France: coordinator ALPAGA I
• Tanja Schwander, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland

The context

Although the question of evolutionary advantages of sexual reproduction has remained unresolved for several decades, important advances have been made over the last years, thanks to Next Generation Sequencing technologies, sophisticated computational tools, extensive phylogenetic information and new statistical methods for testing evolutionary hypotheses via comparative genomics. Genomic data have offered great opportunities to test effects of sexual vs asexual reproduction on patterns of genome structure, genetic diversity and molecular evolution. Genomic tools have also been used to detect the occurrence of sexual reproduction and confirm/invalidate the status of putatively ancient asexual clades. Finally, the newly available complete genome sequences of obligately asexual organisms, especially of an ancient asexual bdelloid rotifer (Flot et al. 2013; Nature 500:453-457) and of the asexual nematode Meloidogyne incognita (Abad et al. 2008; Nature Biotech 26:915-921), enabled the identification of unique genomic peculiarities in asexual lineages.

In 2014 European researchers came together at the University of Lausanne to set-up an international consortium to study the evolutionary genomics of asexual species, with as first initiative the submission of a grant application to France Génomique. The project, entitled ALPAGA (Asexual Lineages and Populations of Animals: a Genomic Analysis) submitted to France Génomique, got granted and started in March 2016. It is a large-scale sequencing project spanning several European laboratories and focusing on a diversity of asexual organisms and their sexual counterparts.

The workshop

It is therefore timely, at the start of this project, to organize a scientific meeting to reunite all the researchers of ALPAGA to coordinate the research efforts and discuss the different workpackages outlined within the project. In addition keynote speakers in the field, who have recently published groundbreaking results, are also invited to present their latest results and provide new and critical insights into the project ALPAGA.

This scientific workshop is also open to PhD students and postdoctoral researchers of Belgian Universities.

The ALPAGA workshop was Supported by

Program

Session 4: Ancient asexual scandals: do they exist and how do they persist? – Chairman: Jean-François Flot